Take Advantage Of Invisible Americans: The Tragic Cost Of Child Poverty Originated By Jeff Madrick Published As Pamphlet

is the most important book on poverty to date, I highly recommend everyone in America to read it, However, I am a bit skeptical about the author's proposal, but the evidence is convincing, This was a frustrating book, and not because I disagree with his general take,

The first problem is that it's short, Very short. The text is onlypages, and the book is smaller than average, and it tries to cover too much territory in that space.
For example, health gets relatively little space and is primarily limited to access to health coverage, Second, while the subtitle is about child poverty, a lot of the book is devoted to the general topic and not specifically about child poverty.
It told me very little that I didn't already know,

His general view is not wrong: We underestimate poverty by using flawed measures we don't provide sufficient assistance to the poor and we're consumed by an individualist philosophy that seeks to place all blame on the poor for their situation.
Our national discourse also skews who is poorthe public overestimates the number of poor nonwhite, especially black, people, He also takes aim at "culture of poverty" thinkers, which is often a way of blaming people of color in particular: "poverty of culture" can be a thinly veiled euphemism for "black culture.
" This is untrue, though for those in long term, cyclical poverty a much smaller percentage than people imagine, some patterns may repeat themselves.


He does himself a disservice here by dismissing family structure, Now, it's true that the Moynihan report became a tool for racism, and that the number of unmarried mothers

has risen across all races since then.
However, recent research is indicating that familial instability is linked to poverty, American family patterns are diverging, with wealthier families more likely to be stable, This needs to be accounted forand without simply blaming single mothers, There are multiple social and economic reasons why this trend is occurring,

Madrick's solution is simple: cash transfers, To a point, I don't disagree, Poor people need money. The nearabolition of AFDC has left people to starve if they cannot work, and childless, nondisabled, nonelderly adults qualify for nothing, But money can only help when the good or service is available to be bought, He dismisses universal childcare "because it will take too long to implement, " But his proposed,a year child allowance would pay for only a fraction of childcare, There isn't enough high quality childcare available for purchase, Similarly, in many cities, there aren't enough decent apartmentsand if we simply gave people money to rent them, it would only result in price inflation.
Further, at current tax rates, such a benefit would not be "largely taxed away" for higher income families,

I agree with a lot of what he saidbut his solution isn't completely thought out, and there's much better work on the topic, even as an introduction.
Incendiary insight into how poverty even episodic shapes futures, How low income leads to bad food to low health to lower IQ, worse performance in school, worse jobs, life of more difficulty.

I totally loved how the he author exposed parts of the sitelinkThe Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life as racist in assumptions.
It is.
The overview of all the programs for the poorer families was mindboggling but instructive, Seems that as a society we don't have the recipe to getting people out of the minefield of poverty, Not in chilhood, not in adulthood,
Q:
A higher proportion of children are poor than adults, c Why Because in poor families there generally are more kids
Q:
America has been transformed in the last generation into a nation where mothers almost universally work.
Yet there is no federal paid leave program for new mothers in America, unlike in many other nations, Neither is there widely available free, highquality public childcare in the United States, с
Important book! We need to do better for our most vulnerable people, for our society as a whole, and as a "powerful" nation.
I wholeheartedly agree with Mr, Madrick's premise. The government can and should do more to alleviate child poverty, I am all for universal health care and I would like to see some thinking towards universal basic income UBI, However, the book was not written or organized clearly, Throughout this book, Jeff Madrick, an economist, proposes that the solution to the very complex problem of child poverty is to give children and their families cash.
While I am not going to go into why I completely disagree that we cannot simply throw a monthly cash allowance at a problem that is very much rooted in the history of racism, discrimination, and just plain bad government policy, I will critique the book itself.


Many of the arguments presented in this book are very compelling, Madrick explains why current measures of poverty are woefully out of date and inaccurate, He discusses the flawed political underpinnings of the notion of "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, as well as an extensive attack of the idea of the "culture of poverty" which often position Black and Latinx communities as hopeless victims instead of people who desire to lift their circumstances.


Despite all of these "right on target" themes, I must admit that this book is very dense and not very accessible to the masses.
There are lots of statistics, heavy handed explanations, and acronyms that are intended more for policymakers than the typical curious reader who may stumble onto this book.
While Madrick does present a compelling case for why child poverty is a moral failing and its devastating consequences, I would have liked to see this Invisible Americans's language a lot more readable for the masses.
Jeff Madrick's arguments for a universal child allowance are very convincing but Invisible Americans is so densely full of statistics and studies as to make for a laborious read.
I can't imagine those who need convincing that it is our moral obligation to provide families equal opportunity, life choices, and health care will push through to the end of the book.
That's too bad because all people in the U, S. need to hear this truth,

The quote from Invisible Americans that best summarizes his argument may be the following: "That the US refuses to raise those in poverty to a decent life reflects a meanspirited and destructive prejudice against the poor, underlined by racism and a sense of class superiority.
It's time to reeducate ourselves, " I wish this were the book to do it,.stars. This book is extremely informative but also dense, It entails an analysis of past, current, and potential policies to address child poverty, There was a lot of interesting references to research that has been conducted in this area, along with a comparative analysis to other developed countries.
It does not contain any personal examples or vignettes, which are sometimes helpful to see a public policy issue from a more personal viewpoint.
Overall, I took a lot of notes and am happy I read it,
This is an amazing book, All government leaders should be required to read it, I think if we followed Madrick's recommendations, our country would be a lot better off and the poverty problem in America would be ameliorated.
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